A way to escape- even campsite life can get you down !

We don’t do product reviews, as a norm, unless it’s something we love, and this one is a game changer.

We have now been parked in Glastonbury since the end of February and actually I started to feel down about our lack of travel.

The job of campsite warden is a relaxed life style, I don’t feel any real pressure and I no longer spend my working life attached to a mobile phone fire fighting other people’s disasters, but I had a really bad day where I was fed up someone said something and I snapped, I was ready to pack and hit the road.

Michele applied her level headed approach, and pointed out how nicely the bank balance was refilling, and generally made me realise how well we have fallen on our feet, not many people can say that this time last year they quit there jobs, took off traveling and then landed a job where they can work together in a beautiful part of the country with nice approachable colleagues.

So the honest answer is to fix the lack of travel, what we don’t lack is Time, we have a set shift pattern that sees us finish at 2pm Wednesday and not return until 2pm Saturday, we still have Paloma, so what’s the problem……

Being park permently on site, we decided to get ourselves an awning so that we could lounge a little in the great British weather, I.e. not outside, we lived in Paloma all of last year but mostly in the warm sunshine, just parking up and then spending the days exploring somewhere new, but going to work, and then coming back to just spend a normal evening in the van, it just going to be a big enough space

So we made a big mistake we popped off to the local motorhome and caravan dealer and selected a fixed Kampa Motor rally awning, now this blog could have been a review of that product, as it’s truly excellent, but it limited our ability to actually move !

So what do we do next, many of you might not know, but before we bought a motorhome Michele and I caravanned most weekends for many years, so we toyed with the idea of buying another caravan, we went off looking to see what vans we could find that would allow us more living space, but coupled with that we needed a tow car, so then we came up with the idea of buying a VW T5 , (I’ve been a Dub fan for a long time we progressed from a bay window to a T4 plus the odd golf and polo)to be a weekend camper van and tow car when needed, ummm it was a great plan until Michele tried to get into the pop top bed, and then when I asked if she could imagine spending 3 months of the winter living the van that plan was shelved!

So Paloma is staying- yeh !

And we have found what we think is a great work around !

So this week we have spent a small fortune on the new 2018 Kampa Rally Drive away, I put a shout on Facebook in the hope that someone else had invested in one (the rrp is £1249.99) but no response, I looked on line and found no written reviews, just a couple of YouTube videos so with a lot of trepidation we just went for it !

Now this Could be the ultimate inflatable awning, it has style and presence, the motorhome community on site all popped by to see our new drive away blow up awning, I think from a looks point of view Kampa have excelled themselves, provided in a modern black colour, it sits nicely with Palomas outside looks.

Moving inside, the view out is spectacular, with large panoramic windows and skylights providing plenty of light during the day and hopefully a view of the stars at night, well we are lucky enough to live in an almost zero light pollution area!

All five panels can be zipped out of the awning or lowered at the top and used veranda style, for when the British weather does eventually warm up and stay nice.

But the biggest game changer, we can undo the three straps that connect the tunnel over the top of the van and drive off to have travel adventures in the uk, on our midweek weekends – get in there !

So my desire to see new things and sites will be rekindled over the next few weeks

5 thoughts on “A way to escape- even campsite life can get you down !”

Hi. Most interested in this post as we will be returning to the U.K. very soon and staying in pretty much one place for 6+ months and like you, recognise the need for a bit more space. I have done some research and come to the conclusion that a drive away is the ‘way’ to go. I also don’t fancy attaching anything to the wind out Fiamma.

Hope you don’t mind a couple of questions ..
1. Are you attaching the awning by throwing straps over the motorhome? Why did you choose this route rather than suckers or the magnetic figure of 8 etc?
2. How much draught are your getting from the sides and underneath? And what have you done to stop the air flow from under the van?
3. Did you purchase any additional accessories?
4. I grew up with tents with poles so have a bit of a skepticism of air inflatables … too many leaking air beds! How robust do your feel the system is? Good Kampa warranty?

Sorry to deluge you with questions when you are working and itching to get way on your free time!!!
Katherine

We’ve gone for the strap method, because II cant for the life of me imagine you could drive away and then get the van back in same place without a lot of messing around…

The back of the awning zips totally shut (shout if you want a pic) so when it’s closed it almost sealed and warm up really quickly, we did think about adding a caravan awning skirt, but this sort of defeats the drive away bit….
Only other bits we’ve bought are the extra storm strap set, well this is England and we’ve got those foam floor tiles to keep our toes warm…

I got to say that in all our time with a caravan I’ve seen the birth of the air awning and they seem to stand up amazing well in the wind, a gust hit it and they seem to flex with it, time will tell, but each ‘pole’ can be isolated for replacement so so far I’m impressed.

We could find anyone with one and no shops had them up on display so it was another leap of faith but it seems like a good product

Thanks. We will buy a third hand steel frame one at a budget price to see how we get on from someone we know. I hadn’t realised the poles could be isolated with one filling point. But if we are going to be stuck in one place for months, we may pop over and have a look at yours! The Old Oaks was our first camper nought away so fond memories.